Engineering Manager, Security and Privacy

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking an experienced and mission-driven Engineering Manager to lead the security and privacy engineering group in our Product Safety and Security team, and to advise the Foundation on security and privacy issues.

Product Safety and Security is a team made of two tightly connected engineering groups. This role manages a group of security and privacy engineers that strengthen the security and privacy of the applications that make up Wikipedia and our other projects. This role works closely with a peer engineering group focused on promoting the integrity of the Wikipedia platform and the safety of the people that make it work. Both engineering groups report to the Director of Engineering, MediaWiki.

This is a leadership role that partners closely with the Group Product Manager for Safety and Security to determine and operationalize the Product Safety and Security team’s roadmap and priorities.

We are only considering candidates based in time zones from UTC−5 to UTC+2 time zones.

Why this role matters
The Wikimedia Foundation operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. We care deeply about the security, privacy, and integrity of these projects, and of the volunteer community that makes them matter. The Product Safety and Security team plays a central role in shaping how the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects will adapt to increasingly complex threats.

You are responsible for:

• Leading a group of security engineers and privacy engineers in protecting the Wikimedia Foundation’s people, project integrity, infrastructure and other assets against threats.
• Advising product management across the Foundation on security best practices and security implications of various product decisions.
• Helping to establish the Wikimedia Foundation’s overall security and safety roadmap, and ensuring delivery against its technical and organizational goals.
• Collaborating with Product & Engineering teams, Legal, ITS and other departments.
• Setting direction, unblocking work, and ensuring delivery against technical and organizational goals.
• Establishing and leading the execution of group processes, including sprint planning, security releases and deployments, security incident response.
• Hiring and developing a high-performing, inclusive engineering group that builds and owns security-critical software and operates from a shared sense of mission

Skills and Experience:

• Experience managing engineers and engineering teams responsible for infrastructure, platform, or developer-facing tools.
• Strong technical background with experience in systems engineering, cloud infrastructure (Kubernetes, OpenStack, etc.), and developer platform architecture.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional collaboration and product-oriented development in open communities or large-scale developer ecosystems.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills, especially in distributed and asynchronous environments.
• Ability to travel 2-3 times a year.

Additionally, we’d love it if you have:

• Experience managing engineering teams with a focus on security.
• Experience contributing to or leading in open-source projects.
• Familiarity with Wikipedia or Wikimedia projects
• A passion for building inclusive platforms that lower barriers to entry and empower a diverse set of contributors.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge, and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects, build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content, support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible, and advocate for policies that enable Wikimedia and free knowledge to thrive. 

The Wikimedia Foundation is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that relies on donations. We receive donations from millions of individuals around the world, with an average donation of about $15. We also receive donations through institutional grants and gifts. The Wikimedia Foundation is a United States 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with offices in San Francisco, California, USA.

As an equal opportunity employer, the Wikimedia Foundation values having a diverse workforce and continuously strives to maintain an inclusive and equitable workplace. We encoura